Friday, August 13, 2010

It's no secret that we like to play with our food in our house. Out of morbid curiosity, we decided to see what would happen if we put watermelon in our food dehydrator. I didn't have high hopes for this. I mean, come on, it's watermelon!

But it turns out that I was pleasantly surprised. Now, obviously, it's not nearly as amazing as biting into fresh watermelon. But it's certainly a valid snack in its own right. The texture is almost like a chip. A bit softer in places, and a bit chewy in places, but mostly crisp, in a good way. The flavor reminded me of watermelon Jolly Ranchers or other fake watermelon-y candy.

All in all, this was definitely one of our more successful food dehydrator experiments so far. Do you have a food dehydrator? What's your favorite thing to suck the moisture out of?

Watermelon Chips: A Photo TutorialAn original Playing House recipe

1/2 medium watermelonFood dehydrator

First do this:

Then do this:

Wait about 12 hours, then flip the slices over. Wait 10-12 more hours. While you're waiting, feel free to do this:

Next time you peek, you should have watermelon chips that look like that top picture up there. Enjoy!

Wild-gathered mushrooms like morels and boletes are the most frequently found foods in our dehydrator. One experiment went really south once and such a mess it made! We gathered a bunch of ink-caps (another yummy wild mushroom that grows prolifically around here) and decided to try drying them. They all turned to ink and melted through the slats and became a nasty slurry in the bottom of the dehydrator. That was not a fun clean-up job at all!BTW, we put the dehydrator outside out in the shop when we dry morels because the spores spread wildly and make me sneeze and sneeze!

Watermelon was one of the first things I ate from a food dehydrator, back when I was a little kid and one of our friends kept one in the barn. I thought it was pretty magical. My favorite things to dry are peaches, mangoes, and pineapple, and bananas. We also made yogurt in ours, but I can't really vouch for it's greatness as I forgot to cover it and it turned out kind of stringy and weird. "Stringy" is an adjective that should never accurately describe yogurt, let me tell you. I'm going to try again, though.

Sounds like fun. I bet you can crumble it up and use as "bacon" on a salad just to add a bit of sweetness and crunch. I love how you can preserve freshness of summer in a dehydrator now I just need to buy one or make one.

Whaaaaa....?! These chips looks like they came from Crazytown! Delicious Crazytown, of course! Not that I "need" another kitchen gadget, but you're kind of making the case for a dehydrator here. Uh oh.

Update: I tried it!I had a watermelon that was disappointingly un-crunchy, so I tried the chip method--it worked! Yummy! They're like little pieces of watermelon candy, they're so sweet! I've dehydrated at 105 degrees overnight for two nights, and they're not quite dry enough, so maybe one more night and they'll be actually crispy.

Update: I tried it!I had a watermelon that was disappointingly un-crunchy, so I tried the chip method--it worked! Yummy! They're like little pieces of watermelon candy, they're so sweet! I've dehydrated at 105 degrees overnight for two nights, and they're not quite dry enough, so maybe one more night and they'll be actually crispy.